Health Communication; *Health Outcomes

This paper examines the many assertions made in the health communication literature about the importance of communication as an essential process in promoting effective health care. If these assertions are true then researchers should be able to demonstrate the ways that communication influences the accomplishment of health care goals--how communication influences health outcomes. The paper examines the links between health communication and health outcomes, examines the health outcomes literature, and proposes a conceptual model of the role of communication in achieving advantageous outcomes in health care and health promotion based upon the systems transformation model. The paper concludes that thf model can serve as a template for both guiding research on communication and health outcomes and for directing the health communication activities of interdependent participants in the modern health care system t